Tea Leaves

Of course by “football” I mean American football and by “sport” I mostly mean “American Sport”. I certainly do not mean “rest of the world” football, which Americans call soccer. If your favorite sport is soccer than we can just agree now that you will hate me and I will feel sorry for you. With the Super Bowl once again upon us I have been ruminating about why football in general, and the NFL in particular, is clearly the best sport in the country. I thought I stole this idea from Chuck Klosterman, who wrote an excellent essay about football in his recent book Eating the Dinosaur. It turns out that his essay did not say what I thought it did, but it did tickle me to ruminate about this subject for a while. So why, exactly, is football better?

Long time readers of the site will be familiar with my problem with bags. At times I have an almost pathological need to shop for them. So it was a mixed blessing when I was told by the powers that be that I would be “allowed” to look for a new computer bag. I had become, for no reason, unhappy with my backpack. A year and a half ago, the pack was perfect, but no longer. Bag shopping is a bit different now than even a few years ago because almost every vendor is now on the Intertubes. It’s possible, in a few short evenings, to study a huge cross section of the available hardware. Here is what you learn.

I hate people who are more talented than me. Well, hate probably isn’t the right word. The way I should put this is that in my life I am constantly confronted by people who are more talented than me and this brings out the darker side of my personality. For example, if you watched Apple’s launch event for the iPad, you will notice that about 42 minutes in, they bring up a guy named Steve Sprang to demo an application called Brushes. Brushes lets you paint pictures on your iPhone, and has been used to create, among other things, covers for the New Yorker. I used to work with Steve, and he’s always been smarter than me.

It was around this time last winter that I made my brief foray into World of Warcraft, buying a two-month card and playing it deeply, 5 years after everyone else had gotten around to it. At the end of that two month period, I had too much work to do, so I never bothered to renew.

This January, I had the same urge to play something “big” again. I can pinpoint the thought process that led me there: I was enjoying Torchlight, which made me try Titan Quest and then Borderlands, and that last game was sufficiently MMO-like to reawaken the hunger. Some people will tell you that they like MMOs for the large, persistent world, or for working together with their friends to vanquish a common foe. But I know what MMO’s are really all about: the ability to pick up a limitless number of objects whose titles are rendered in green, yellow, blue, or purple text. I can never get enough of that.

And when there’s no sunshine, collecting objects with colored text is a pretty good way of waiting for winter to end.

I’m sort of coming to the conclusion that the iPhone is where some of the most interesting games are being developed.

“Interesting” has a few meanings in this context. First off, the various hardware features of the platform (multitouch, the directional sensor, and so on) have led to certain game interactions that you just don’t see on other platforms. Second, the ubiquitous networking makes multiplayer games, especially turn-based strategy games like Uniwar a pleasure to play, instead of a chore. Thirdly, the massive competition in iPhone games has led to a price war, leading to a market where consumers can buy scores of games, many of them excellent, for a few dollars. Or sometimes less.

Bee Spelled is in the third category. It’s at heart an iPhone translation of many of the mechanics from Popcap’s awesome game Bookworm Adventures. If Popcap had published BWA on the iPhone, I’d have bought it. But they didn’t. So I bought this instead.

My year in photography ended like it usually does, at my parents’ house where I took pictures of the Christmas festivities and all of the excessive preparation of food. This year I sent the gallery to my parents, and then got a curious email from my dad essentially asking me why my camera takes better pictures. I did not have an answer. As is usual for me though, I do a lot of insight from the negative. So, for the new decade I present up to ten things that will not make your pictures any better.

This winter, as I believe I’ve alluded to in other articles, I’ve begun to ease back into boardgaming as a hobby. This is difficult, as you might imagine, since the other Pete is my only friend, and he doesn’t play boardgames. But I can at least think about playing them, and I actually managed to press-gang some of my relatives into playing Combat Commander and Conflict of Heroes at Christmas.

Tonight I installed the Europa Universalis III demo and played it, and tried really, really hard to care about the game.

Same results as with EU II. Beautiful map, and gameplay more stultifying than Sominex. I just don’t get it.

Let’s review what I ended up buying in December.

On Steam: Not counting Dragon Age, which I purchased before the sale started, I ended up with: Borderlands, Bioshock, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Counter-Strike, Titan Quest, and The Witcher.

On Good Old Games: Myst, Riven, and Jagged Alliance 1 and 2.

A few more sales like this, and I’m gonna be broke.

To be fair, I probably only ended up spending about $70, at least half of which was just for Borderlands. But as I read accounts from people who one-clicked their way through $300 worth of games because “the deals were so good”, there is a sad recognition.

No retarded “friendly fire” on the major league fireball spell. So you can incinerate your enemies with appropriate abandon. That is all.